Guess who's coming to dinner?: The Famous Parents Quiz

By: Staff

4 Min Quiz

Image: refer to hsw

About This Quiz

When we at HowStuffWorks think "famous parents," our minds don't immediately jump to tabloid baby bumps and celebrity adoptions. Instead, we're more interested in how motherhood and fatherhood intersected with the careers of the most influential names in science, politics and the arts -- as well as some classic Hollywood icons.

After Katharine Houghton Hepburn's suffragette efforts helped win women the right to vote, she switched her focus to birth control and forged a relationship with Margaret Sanger. At birth control rallies in the 1930s, attendees at times inquired more about Hepburn's sensational daughter than contraceptives.

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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's brood of adoptive children has been compared to what entertainer's "Rainbow Tribe?"

Liza Minnelli

Josephine Baker

Dolly Parton

The 1920s sex symbol Josephine Baker adopted 12 children in the late 1950s and 1960s from Japan, Finland, Columbia, France, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Venezuela and Morocco. She referred to them as her "Rainbow Tribe," and sought to create a mini-model of race-blind brotherhood.

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In the art world, Florence Owens Thompson is better known as whom?

Picasso's "Mother"

"Migrant Mother"

"Whistler's Mother"

In 1936, Florence Owens Thompson became memorialized in the art world and American history when photographer Dorothea Lange snapped the poor "Migrant Mother's" picture. Owens' family was on the brink of starvation and searching for work at a pea picker camp during the Great Depression at the time the photo was taken.

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Which of the following dads didn't have a daughter follow in his professional footsteps?

Sigmund Freud

Muhammad Ali

Bob Dylan

All three men passed along their respective talents to their children, but it was Bob Dylan's son Jakob who pursued music. Anna Freud trail blazed child psychoanalysis, and Laila Ali spent a few years in the boxing ring.

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Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter would go on to write what horror classic?

Frankenstein

Dracula

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

In 1797, "Vindication of the Rights of Women" author Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to her daughter Mary, who would publish "Frankenstein" under the name Mary Shelley.

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Kennedy matriarch Rose outlived how many of her nine children?

2

4

6

Rose Kennedy lived to be 104 years old, outliving four of her children who all died in tragic circumstances: Joseph, Kathleen, John and Robert. She once described her life as "the agony and the ecstasy."

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Which of the following did Indira Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi have in common?

Both had two sons.

Both left their respective marriages.

Both were assassinated.

Both Gandhis were shot and killed, but Indira Gandhi left behind only one son (her younger son had previously died in a plane crash), whereas Mahatma Gandhi left behind four sons.

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Which of the following did Marie Curie not have in common with her eldest daughter, Irène?

Both died of leukemia.

Both won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Both had a husband die tragically.

Marie and Irène Curie both won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry for their studies on radioactivity -- a dangerous pursuit that also fostered fatal leukemia. Marie Curie's husband Pierre was struck and killed by a horse-drawn wagon soon after the birth of their second child, while Irène Curie's husband outlived her by two years.

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Arizona Donnie Clark is better known by what outlaw nickname?

Calamity Jane

Ma Barker

Bonnie

After Arizona Donnie Clark married George Barker and had four sons, she eventually became known as Ma Barker, the senior citizen maternal mastermind of her sons' 1930s crime gang.

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Which famous composer isn't also a famous father?

Bach

Beethoven

Mozart

Ludwig van Beethoven had a number of love affairs during his life, but he never fathered any children. When his brother died of tuberculosis, Beethoven won custody of his nephew Karl after a prolonged legal fight.

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Edwin Land received the inspiration of his lifetime when his daughter complained that what was taking too long?

heating up food

film development

connecting to the Internet

Polaroid founder Edwin Land often retold the story of how, in 1944, his daughter commented that she wished she could immediately see a picture he had taken of her, inspiring him to invent the instant camera.

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Which Hollywood icon and mother became immortalized with the line "No wire hangers!"?

Bette Davis

Joan Crawford

Barbara Stanwyck

In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in "Mommie Dearest," the film adaptation of the 1978 memoir by Christina Crawford that depicts an abusive childhood at the hands of her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford. In one of the most famous scenes taken from the book, Dunaway flies into a rage over clothes hangers, screaming "No wire hangers!" in her on-screen daughter's face.

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Which Beatles member was the first to become a grandfather?

Ringo Starr

George Harrison

Paul McCartney

In 1985, Ringo Starr became the first Beatles grandpa. Speaking to a British newspaper, the former drummer idol described his new granddaughter as a "little beauty."

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Which famous author once said, "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it"?

Which action star's mother has been an astrologer and a wrestler?

Jackie Stallone is not only mother to "Rocky," but also was a former women's wrestler and inventor of rumpology, or telling people's fortunes based on the shape of their derrieres.

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What political powerhouse's mother was abandoned by her parents at 8 years old?

Hillary Clinton

Condoleezza Rice

Nancy Pelosi

Hillary Clinton attributed her love of learning and perseverance toward success to her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who struggled from an early age after her parents skipped town, leaving their children to fend for themselves.

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Walter Camp is known as the father of what sport?

football

baseball

basketball

Walter Camp concocted American football, originally modeled on rugby, during his undergraduate stint at Yale University in the late 1870s. In 1912, Camp not-so-surprisingly selected his son and football player, Walter Camp Jr., for the All-American team, which was another one of Camp's football-related inventions.

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True or false: The inventor of Mother's Day was never married, nor had children.

true

false

Anna Jarvis organized the first Mother’s Day celebration on May 10, 1908 (in honor of her own mother), in Grafton, West Virginia, but she remained single and childless throughout her life.

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Which Supreme Court justice has the most kids?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Stephen G. Breyer

Antonin Scalia

Justice Scalia has the largest brood of anyone on the Supreme Court -- by far. He and his wife, Maureen McCarthy, have nine children.

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Which of the following Oscar-winning actresses doesn't have an Oscar-winning dad?

Susan Sarandon

Angelina Jolie

Anjelica Huston

Anjelica Huston's father John Huston earned a gold statue for 1948's "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," and Jolie's dad Jon Voight took home the Academy Award in 1978 for "Coming Home." Sarandon's father wasn't in showbiz.

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